


the planet drowns in a hundred days

by aosc



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 12:02:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7267357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I can't see my own arms and legs, or know if this is a trap or blessing, finding myself back here, where everything in this house has long been over:</i> margaret atwood: morning in the burned house.</p>
<p>Or: Assorted drabbles, slices of life & outtakes, all canons & different verses. RoyEd & gen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. tricks of the trade: roy-centric: gen

**Author's Note:**

> bc i need a space to store all those little tidbits that come to you, and never manage to flesh out. i like them too, so they'll be posted here. canon, AU, crossovers; you name it.

* * *

 

Roy's adolescence feels like clawing to the bottom of a bottle of malt by yourself; aftertaste of dry and chapped lips, boyhood discarded in the corner, murky dark spots of memory forgotten gladly. Scrubbed out, garishly clean. There is nothing to be ashamed of, this is what it is. This is what he is.

 

Madame Christmas eyes the patrons residing in the far corner with neutrality, a slight sneer, so far as those who have been around her can tell; with half an eye of wariness and no more, for the other half. They've hung their jackets to dry, whipping wind and rain outside, slithering down the windows, and the dull brass insignia stars glint off the light. Scarring against the starch blue of the fabric. Roy had noted their entrance, and tugged the chair closer to the bend of his legs, the nondescript coat tighter onto his shoulders, as they went, pack by pack, to order.

 

"I'd wish you could've kept better company, boyo," Madame says, and wipes down the counter, as the last of them retire to their corner once more.

 

Roy wipes the smudges of condense to lip at the foot of his glass. "This is me, keeping company," he replies.

 

Madame eyes him. "You certainly are the topic of conversations," she says, "The deaf couldn't avoid hearing  _their_  chatter."

 

Flashes. Master's receding, thinning hair, striped with sweat, mouth with blood. Riza's pale back, center piece an ingrained curse of ink and a slink salamander. The war - the gore of an Ishbalan's charcoal throat, torn up ribcage. It's him and Major Armstrong and the raw rip of the earth beneath their ruin, Kimbley's morbid epos.

 

His adolescence was like that, his adulthood a continuation - grim. It has grown into archaic evidence of his conviction, once upon a time conceived, always, always maintained. It's what he is.

 

Roy drains his glass. "The hearing impaired will vote, just like any, come time. Thank you - for the drink, Madame."

 

Madame Christmas snorts, rounding the glass into the curl of her palm. "Repayment's with interest, Roy-boy," she says.

 

He waves as he shutters the door behind him.

 

*


	2. coastlines yearning for you, for me: CoS: pre-RoyEd

* * *

 

It's because it's the anti-thesis of what he is. Of what he has learned, the intricate mural on Riza's back mirroring in the soft licked orange fire glow, casting murky shadows, the lessons looping around the oxygen manipulation, the calculations,  _x_  versus the woven silk and cotton  _y_  of his gloves, of -

 

Briggs is dry. Its snow doesn't melt, doesn't become wet planes on the shoulders of his uniform, bleeding through his coat. There is a sparsity in the composition of the air, a simplistic such. It requires simple things of him, if he is to stay alive. Digging out the natural bear traps, making sure that always, there is a stack of matches, and in the event that there is not, enough of the raw materials that compose P4S3 and potassium chlorate, enough dry wood, to stick makeshift ones together. He chips the wood too thin more than often, and the supply runs never include raw phosphor, tetrahedral, the composites that he'd require.

 

There are always matches.

 

He survives. He replies to the letters, sparse with his words, drying out, just like the rustic wood of the cottage, the harsh pull and tug of the wind. Briggs is unforgiving, and that is what they have in common. At night, he does not allow himself to acknowledge the chalk and talk of the figures drawn in a bloodied transmutation circle, the Xerxesian molt yellow of Edward's gaze, taking on the same basic widening, the same intensity, whether he is sneering and nursing his torn automail arm, or giving his opinion on Roy's low life, good for nothing opinions. He does not acknowledge pain, boring through his gut, turning shallow wounds into gouges. He is here because there is something to be learnt from the way the Briggs' winter will devour you if you do not adequately combat it, keep it at bay.

 

This is what he deserves. This is his penance, and he has to believe that it will serve the country, and his men, the best.

 

*

 

The underground city is vast, is a caricature of life, especially with passing the withering, decaying piles of human remains, Gluttony's massive form lying in a pool of water, blood coagulating, isolated proteins bobbing in the squalls of waves coming from the city retroactively shaking in the aftermath of the battle. Roy passes it with no little amount of trepidation, passes it quickly; there is far too much blood in there for the twitching remains of the Homunculus to be the only source of it. Crystalline little scraps of the Stone are spread around one of the heads' blunt teeth, they will discover later, and the jagged edges of its wounds are crusted in ridges of rose mineral. The blood is not from Gluttony.

 

He sees the flash of Ed crawling into the basket, too caught in motion for Roy to make out the knife slice of his jaw, the slant of his body, thinned out after six years of not fighting to within an inch for your life every week end. It's there, six years of growth, six years of discoverable stories, new scars kept between them - and realizes that no, Gluttony did not touch the brothers. This memory is minted, fresh, and in it -

 

Edward waves, mouth hard set, but tilting half, and Roy feels it, the rekindling of a fire long forgotten. Long forsaken.

 

*


End file.
